India Union Budget GST changes

The Indian Finance Minister has submitted to parliament on 1 February the latest 2020 budget amidst slowing growth of 5% compared to the trend of 6.8%. The statement included a number of Goods and Services Tax changes, including:

• New process for voluntarily GST registered businesses to deregister
• Simplified GST return from 1 April 2020, including credit repayment process
• Minor retrospective GST rate changes to certain categories of goods
• Broadening the scope of the e-commerce 1% withholding GST that e-commerce marketplaces must charge on platform transactions they process. However, if the marketplace does not have a registered permanent account with the Indian authorities, then the tax is 5%. This should be processed at the time of the collection of payment by the marketplace. It is calculated on transactions above INR500,000. The measure comes into effect on 1 April 2020.
• Confirmation of phased introduction of e-invoices, initially on a voluntary basis in Feb 2020. Then going to mandatory in April.
• To support the above, the introduction of dynamic QR codes on invoices